Project Tag: Game Jam

This was a collaboration to test team chemistry before working on other projects together. The CGA Jam looked like a lot of fun. There are actually two separate 4-color palettes, but the rules stipulated that we could change between the two in-game. As usual, we over-scoped and ran out of time before we could really design any levels. The theme we chose was ‘Gravity’. The idea was that you play as the galaxy’s worst pilot who is continually crash-landing during his explorations. Every location you visit would have different amounts of gravity and there would also be machines that could influence gravity that must be shut off before you can leave. None of this is very clear in-game and we didn’t score very well at all. But we did get featured in a YouTube compilation and the chemistry was great so we will be working together more in the future.

This was a quick and dirty project to see how much progress I could make on a game in about a day. After the game jam theme was revealed (Ancient Technology), I spent probably more time arguing with a friend about whether or not cannons were considered ‘ancient’. They were used in 12th century China, so I just went with it and the main character became a Panda. The basic idea was ‘what if you had an entire game that was like the barrel levels in Donkey Kong Country?’.